hat Tom had refused her hand.

A few days more, and Grace Harvey also had gone Eastward Ho.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A RECENT EXPLOSION IN AN ANCIENT CRATER.

It is, perhaps, a pity for the human race in general, that some
enterprising company cannot buy up the Moselle (not the wine, but the
river), cut it into five-mile lengths, and distribute them over Europe,
wherever there is a demand for lovely scenery. For lovely is its proper
epithet; it is not grand, not exciting--so much the better; it is
scenery to live and die in; scenery to settle in, and study a single
landscape, till you know every rock, and walnut-tree, and vine-leaf by
heart: not merely to run through in one hasty steam-trip, as you now do,
in a long burning day, which makes you not "drunk"--but weary--"with
excess of beauty." Besides, there are two or three points so superior to
the rest, that having seen them, one cares to see nothing more. That
paradise of emerald, purple, and azure, which opens behind Treis; and
that strange heap of old-world houses at Berncastle, which have
scrambled up to the top of a rock to stare at the steamer, and have
never been able to get down again--between them, and after them, one
feels like a child who, after a great mouthful of pine-apple jam, is
condemned to have poured down its throat an everlasting stream of
treacle.

So thought Stangrave on board the steamer, as he smoked his way up the
shallows, and wondered which turn of the river would bring him to his
destination. When would it all be over? And he never leaped on shore
more joyfully than he did at Alf that afternoon, to jump into a
carriage, and trundle up the gorge of the Issbach some six lonely weary
miles, till he turned at last into the wooded caldron of the
Romer-kessel, and saw the little chapel crowning the central knoll, with
the white high-roofed houses of Bertrich nestling at its foot.

He drives up to the handsome old Kurhaus, nestling close beneath
heather-clad rocks, upon its lawn shaded with huge horse-chestnuts, and
set round with dahlias, and geraniums, and delicate tinted German
stocks, which fill the air with fragrance; a place made only for young
lovers:--certainly not for those black, petticoated worthies, each with
that sham of a sham, the modern tonsure, pared down to a poor florin's
breadth among their bushy, well-oiled curls, who sit at little tables,
passing the lazy day "a muguetter les bourgeoises" of Sarrebruck and
Treves, and